HEALTH & SCIENCE

SUBTLE WAYS THE PHARMA-CORPS MANIPULATE YOUR HEALTH CARE

ADRIANE FUGH-BERMAN MD, NATIONAL WOMEN'S HEALTH NETWORK - If you're
handed a laptop at your doctor's office to type in your medical
information, don't use it - unless you don't mind your personal medical
information being sent straight to a pharmaceutical company. Phreesia, a
New York company, distributes wireless "WebPads" that patients use to
input medical histories and other information, including why they're
seeing the doctor. A 2005 Phreesia press release states, "After
completing the interview patients are directed to a health education
portal where they are able to read targeted material about their health
that reduces their perceived wait time.". . .

The company's website notes that: "Phreesia partners with pharmaceutical
and medical device companies to provide sponsored content to patients
before they see their physician often stimulating conversation and
helping to educate patients on health issues relevant to their visit."1
Subtle advertising isn't the only way pharmaceutical companies benefit.

Your doctor gets an electronic copy of your health questionnaire, but so
does the pharmaceutical (or medical device) company, which uses the
information for marketing purposes. And no, that's not illegal, because
patient names are stripped from the questionnaire before being
transmitted to the sponsoring company. Your doctor gets the opportunity
to "code higher," which means choosing a diagnosis that reimburses more
from insurance companies.

Drug and device companies have invaded waiting rooms in other ways as
well. A company called The Healthy Advice Network has installed silent
TVs permanently tuned to a mixture of drug ads and health news in 95,000
waiting rooms across the U.S. Customized messages can be included or
certain advertisements blocked. Healthy Advice tells physicians that any
specific ads can be removed from the content with "no questions asked."

Does your doctor have a web site? It may be a present from Big Pharma as
a way to gather information about patients, coax consumers to visit web
sites and increase their demand for specific drugs, and increase
doctors' receptivity to visits from drug reps. Health Banks is one
company that develops web sites customized to doctors' practices and/or
specific diseases. (Other companies that offer web sites to physicians
include Amicore, a joint venture by Pfizer, IBM, and Microsoft;
MyHealth.com, from Schering-Plough; and MyDocOnline, from Aventis.)
These Big Pharma-sponsored sites are made available through the
companies' drug reps, a ploy to provide "a compelling role for
pharmaceutical sales representatives."

Big Pharma sponsors use the web sites to collect information about the
concerns of specific practices' clients. Sharing this information with
doctors provides drug reps with more face time with physicians. But
doctors aren't the only ones getting this information. HealthBanks
collects data on the interests of the sites' users and shares that with
the pharmaceutical companies that fund the web sites. HealthBanks' chief
executive officer has stated: "Helping make the health information
connection between the prescriber and the patient is the big opportunity
for pharmaceutical companies today. In addition to becoming a valuable
contributor to the health care process by supporting a
physician-to-patient channel, pharmaceutical companies will also benefit
by gaining proprietary access to aggregate data about physician and
patient behaviors, questions, opinions, and preferences." . . .

https://www.nwhn.org/publications/health_activists/35_nwhnmay06.pdf

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THE SAFETY POLICE STRIKE AGAIN

DAVID LISTER, TIMES UK - A tiny coastal community is no longer receiving
post after Royal Mail judged as too dangerous a footpath that postmen
have walked along to reach it since Victorian times. For more than 100
years a postman has walked the 1 1/2 mile track to a cluster of crofts
on the beautiful Ardmore peninsula on the northwest tip of Scotland. But
Royal Mail said yesterday that it had cancelled the service after a
postman slipped and fell on a grassy slope, leading it to view the route
as an "unreasonable" risk to the health and safety of its workers.

Since late Victorian times, postmen have made their way, apparently
without mishap, along the path above Loch a'Chadh-Fi, just south of
Rhiconich, on the Ardmore peninsula in Sutherland, one of the most
isolated corners of Britain. The journey, which takes about 30 minutes
each way, includes heather-clad hills, lush woodland and a section of
waterfall, and is safely navigated most days by a local mother and her
two young children, aged 5 and 3.

But a spokeswoman for Royal Mail said that the path was "fundamentally
dangerous", while because there was no mobile telephone reception for
much of the route it meant that "if an accident happened, the postman or
woman concerned may not be discovered for many hours". . .

Local residents on the peninsula, led by John Ridgway, a former
paratrooper who was part of the first two-man team to row the North
Atlantic 40 years ago and founded an adventure school in Ardmore, have
vowed to take their case all the way to Europe after losing an appeal to
Postcomm, the independent regulator. . .

He added: "I am 68. If I get a hospital appointment and it doesn't reach
me through the post, I go to the back of a six-month queue. Well, blow
that." He dismissed Royal Mail's concerns as "wishy-washy, ineffectual,
ridiculous, paper-shuffling nonsense", and claimed that there had been
no serious injury to the relief postman who slipped and fell on March 15
last year.

He said: "We have asked Royal Mail for proof of these injuries. He
turned up at our house under a minute after falling over, chatted to my
daughter for a while and then walked back. Within two days he was out
with the mountain rescue."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2259800,00.html

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YOUNG MAN HIT BY LIGHTNING WHILE LISTENING TO IPOD

FELISA CARDONA DENVER POST - Jason Bunch was listening to Metallica on
his Ipod while mowing the lawn outside his Castle Rock home Sunday
afternoon when lightning hit him.
The last thing the 17-year-old remembers was that a storm was coming
from the north and he had only about 15 minutes before he should go
inside. Next thing he knew, he was in his bed, bleeding from his ears
and vomiting. He was barefoot and had taken off his burned T-shirt and
gym shorts. He doesn't know how he got back in the house.
Bunch immediately called his mother, who was in Illinois visiting
family.

"Mom, I think I was hit by lightning," he said.

Kelly Risheill told her son to call 911, and she started the 14-hour
drive home. About the same time, a neighbor saw Bunch's scorched green
and white Reebok tennis shoes in the street, a few feet away from the
lawn mower. She also called for help. Bunch was taken to Sky Ridge
Medical Center and placed in intensive care. He was sent home Tuesday.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4016385#

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GREAT MOMENTS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH

MARC ABRAHAMS GUARDIAN - Can capsaicin - the chemical that causes most
of the burning sensation when you chomp on a chilli pepper - relieve
itching at the nether end of the digestive tract? A team of Israeli
scientists tried to find out. They tackled a maddening medical condition
called "idiopathic intractable pruritus ani". Most people, including
most doctors when they are talking informally to each other, use the
less-formal name: "persistent butt itch". It is one of a wide class of
medical conditions that sound humorous until you experience them
yourself. And then they still sound funny, which perhaps adds to the
discomfort.

Dr Eran Goldin and a large team of colleagues at Hadassah University
Hospital, in Jerusalem, collected 44 patients who suffered from chronic
butt itch. Each had endured at least three months of suffering. None had
responded to the traditional treatments - gentle washing and drying of
the affected area, and avoidance of certain foods that are famous for
causing chronic butt itch.

Coffee, tea, cola, beer, chocolate and tomatoes are thought to be the
six biggest causes of the problem, identified as such in a 1997 report
by William G Friend, of the University of Washington, in the US. Dr
Friend believed that coffee was the main culprit, responsible for about
80% of all cases of intractable butt itch. Drink less coffee and you'll
be able to sit still, if you are one of the luckier butt itch sufferers.
The 44 Israeli itch victims, though, did not have that sort of luck.
Theirs was an itch of unknown origin, a head-scratching puzzle for any
doctor who tried to treat them.

Dr Goldin and his team solved this puzzle for 31 of their 44 patients by
applying the capsaicin topically. Four patients did feel what Dr Goldin
called "a very mild perianal burning lasting 10-15 minutes" after the
treatment, but apparently this was, for them, a small price to pay.

Some months later, the doctors checked up on 18 of the patients. All
said they were still feeling pretty good, so long as they gave
themselves an anal dose of capsaicin every day or two. The Goldin report
concluded that "capsaicin is a new, safe, and highly effective treatment
for severe intractable idiopathic pruritus ani".

http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,1811526,00.html

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MEAT FROM A PETRI DISH?

TRACI HUKILL, ALTERNET - "Cultured meat," it's called, and it is
supposed to save us from the execrable pollution and guilt of factory
farms while still allowing all 6.5 billion of us to stuff our gullets
with ham sandwiches whenever we want to. It already exists in ground or
chipped form. What Dutch scientists are working on now is a product that
costs a few dollars per pound instead of a few thousand. It could be as
little as five years away.

The concept is as simple as it is horrifying. Take some stem cells, or
myoblasts, which are the precursors to muscle cells. Set them on
"scaffolding" that they can attach to, like a flat sheet of plastic that
the cells can later be slid off of. Put them in a "growth medium" --
some kind of fluid supplying the nutrients that blood would ordinarily
provide. "Exercise" them regularly by administering electric currents or
stretching the sheets of cells mechanically. Wait. Harvest. Eat.

It seems like something out of a chilling sci-fi future, the very
epitome of bloodless Matrix-style barbarism. But growing flesh in a
petri dish is an old idea from the early 20th century that received a
fresh infusion of, how you say, growth medium in 2002.

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/38755/